Window boxes and hanging baskets allow you to add color to otherwise drab areas of your landscape. Properly designing these outdoor accessories requires the right combination of plants. Most baskets and boxes contain a mix of medium, short, and trailing plants that work together to create multiple layers of texture and interest. The taller plants are often the most noticeable, while the trailing plants are pulled from the more utilitarian ranks of ground covers and vines. Here are some of our favorites.

Trailing Plants for Hanging Baskets

These trailing plants are popular in hanging baskets: bacopa, sweet potato vine, and calibrachoa. Photos from tamu.edu.

Hanging baskets look great with plants that create thick canopies. The most popular trailing plants for hanging baskets produce an abundance of vibrant blooms. They can turn hanging planters into huge, colorful clusters of flowers suspended in mid-air.

Hanging baskets are difficult to maintain for more than a single season, so in many areas, gardeners prefer annuals so they don’t have to worry about their flower baskets in the winter.

Annual Varieties Well-Suited to Hanging Baskets

Common Name

Scientific Name

Cascadia Hybrid Snapdragon

Antirrhinum pendula

Bonfire Begonia

Begonia boliviensis

MiniFamous Calibrachoa

Calibrachoa spp.

Cora Cascade Vinca

Catharanthus roseus

Spreading Sunpatiens Impatient

Impatiens x hybrida

Blue Mountain Nierembergia

Nierembergia hippomanica

Avalanche, Wave, and Tidal Wave Petunia

Petunia x hybrida

Boutique Blue Bacopa

Sutera cordata

Whirlybird Nasturtium

Tropaeolum majus

Sweet Potato Vine

Ipomoea batatas

Trailing Plants for Window Boxes

English ivy (hedera helix) can be grown as an perennial in much of the United States. Its vines add a lovely trailing accent to window boxes.

Whether you mount them under windows or hang them from deck railings, flower boxes look great with vines spilling over the sides. Many gardeners choose trailing plants with flowers, but others prefer vibrant green leaves.

Any plants that do well in hanging baskets will thrive in window boxes, but may need to be replanted each year. Because they can hold significantly more growing medium than hanging baskets, window boxes can also support much larger, perennial plants to create container gardens that return year after year. When choosing plants for perennial window boxes, make sure that you group species with similar watering needs that do well in your USDA Hardiness Zone.

Perennial Varieties Well-Suited to Window Boxes

Common Name

Scientific Name

USDA Hardiness

Alyssum

Alyssum spp.

Zones 3 to 8

Hardy Iceplant

Delosperma floribunda

Zones 5 to 8

Clove Drops

Diantdus caryophyllus

Zones 5 to 9

Ornamental Strawberries

Fragaria x ananassa

Zones 4 to 8

Coral Bells

Heucherella spp.

Zones 4 to 9

Lantana

Latana spp.

Zones 8 to 10

Periwinkle

Vinca minor

Zones 4 to 9

English Ivy

Hedera helix

Zones 5 to 9

Vines for Containers

Don’t forget plants that grow up instead of hanging down! Some vines can be grown in planters and trained up a trellis or allowed to fall to the ground. Vines with shorter stems tend to do best, but longer vines can be clipped to the container’s rim once they reach a desired length to create a draped effect. Vines grow aggressively, so be sure to provide plenty of water and fertilizer during their incredible growth spurts.

Kristi Waterworth grew up on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks, where nothing could top sneaking samples from the rows of onions, marigolds, tomatoes, okra, peas, and beans in her mother's garden. When her father gave her a copy of “The Square Foot Gardener” as a preteen, her interest in gardening exploded. Kristi's dreams of vegetation soon bloomed into a small commercial greenhouse, where she sold heirloom vegetables and offered advice to a steady stream of gardeners from all walks of life. Sadly, she closed the greenhouse in 2011, but continues to write about gardening while studying seed catalogs and experimenting with gardening techniques.

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